Kurt Elling Quotes
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Grammy nominations are certainly pleasant, but you can forget about them and lead a perfectly happy life - provided you have the approval of the musicians you work with.
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It's pretty rare in jazz to have a full-on steady band.
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You don't just let a guy drop off the earth and not come together with everybody who knew him and loved him and respected him. You try to do it the right way.
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There is an actor's responsibility in presenting the emotional content of the lyrics to an audience. But whether you do that in a straightforward fashion or an ironic fashion or a blase fashion is all about opportunities, and singers are missing opportunities as artists if they don't pay attention to the lyric.
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Chicago has a burly, action-oriented but still self-assured and relaxed confidence to its stride. The city has a lot of wide-open space and all the possibilities that suggests. There's a lot of horizontal grandeur here.
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You want to be doing your best work whatever field of the arts you're in because your life's going to be over all too soon, and you have to make the most of it.
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I didn't arrive on the scene until after Jaco Pastorius had passed, but 'Three Views of a Secret' is a long-time favourite of mine.
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I've worked with a number of big bands, but there's nothing in life like the Basie band.
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I've tried to educate myself in the world and what's beautiful and what has meaning and is lasting. Then I just follow my intuition and see how it fits.
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I'm thrilled when I hear the greatest jazz musicians. They continue to search in ways other musicians do not.
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I try to sleep as much as I can. I drink a lot of water. I practice consistently and just try to be ready for the gig.
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As improvisers, we're acting as composers in front of people.
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There's a wide spectrum of possibilities in how to deliver a song.
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I haven't been afraid of John Coltrane or Miles Davis or Bill Evans or Wayne Shorter or Herbie Hancock. Why would I be afraid of the Beatles?
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I know how hard it's been for me to get my thing out there.
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Every record is a gate of a certain kind for me.
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Salacious? I suppose every once in a while the salacious thing is not a bad thing. It's kind of monochromatic if that's all you do.
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The great jazz and jazz-influenced singers carry themselves with a certain panache and a certain elegance and, for lack of a better word, self-confidence.
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I was very lucky that more experienced musicians allowed me to caterwaul until I figured out what it was really about.
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Part of my joy as a singer is to give gifts to people, and one way I try to connect to them is to add something in French or German or whatever.
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Karl Johnson, my first piano player at Milt Trenier's, he just swung really hard and gave me a sense of really belonging to the jazz scene.
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There's a spiritual complement to any attempt at transposing a commitment to humanity through music or art.
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I hope that I'm also maturing emotionally as a human being as things go on.
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Each of the CDs prior to 'Flirting With Twilight' were more like roller-coaster rides.